Ag solathar chuici

The last time that a lot of people were trying to learn Irish was the Gaelic Revival of about 1890 to 1920. It happened because they had noticed that a whole rich fascinating world existed in Ireland, a world the mainstream culture of money, respectability and Empire did not recognize. This other world spoke of the reality of Ireland, and reality of life together, in a gripping, stirring, mind-altering way, in ways that the mainstream did not. It offered insights, pleasures and meanings that the mainstream culture did not. The Revival was an attempt to learn a new world, and to help that world carry on into the 20^th century.

People learned Irish in order to explore that other world, and in order to become better and more intensely alive people. Each issue of the Gaelic Journal, each new book of folktales or of ancient texts, carried a cargo of treasures—jewels possessing the power to help these explorers in their journey of social, cultural and self-discovery. It was a quiet revolution, and it must have been an exciting time, for some, to be alive.

Yes, the revival failed and the faded pamphlets are today embarrassing or merely quaint. 

But learning Irish is pretty straightforward, right? You buy a course. Voila!

The problem is that most courses are still trying to combat the image of Irish as a poor peasant language, and so they determinedly deal mainly with certifiably up-to-date modern things. Many readily-available language courses are pretty much of a pattern, anyway, whether we’re talking Irish or Catalan. So we tend to get Irish reduced to common Euro-talk, and then reconstructed with a bit of cream, butter and potato. (Not all texts are like this, of course.) Plus there’s only so much that can be fit into a course book.

Odi ni Cheileachair from an Rinn, a singer.


Web-sites and a good bit of TG4 and print material today offer the same kind of limited Irish.

Take the word “aistriu”, for example. It means “translate”, right? Or maybe also “move house,” as in the proverb “Aistriu na hAoine….” So all we need to do is to memorize the word, then use it as we would use the word “translate” in English. We build sentences by substituting Irish words for English ones in the English sentences in our mind.

Aside from the fact that every language approaches things from a different angle, so that we can’t just translate from one language to another by word substitution, “aistriu” has a range of meanings that “translate” doesn’t: “To move from one place to another” (example: “Bionn coinini ag aistriu gach aon ait rompu, feachaint ca bhfaighidis glasra.”); “Take away” (example: Siol, agus na preachain a dh’aistriu.”); “To change” (example: Tha an saol aistrithe ar fad.” “Dhineas e a dh’aistriu.”); “To change” (example: Spailpini, nilid ann anois, is mor an t-aistriu ar an saol.” “Nach mo aistriu a chuireann an saol de?”)

(All these are from Diolaim Dheiseach, edited by Diarmaid O hAirt, Royal Irish Academy, 1988, which is a collection of words and idioms collected in County Waterford.)

So word for-word does not equal “Irish.”

A person can memorize the various senses, meanings and nuances of “aistriu” as they appear in the dictionary, and then try to remember and use them, but that’s a kind of heavy construction in the dark that shouldn’t be asked of language learners.

Lucky for you, though, I have an answer. Yes, for only $12.95 a month through PayPal, I will link you into “Gael-o-Can”, gathering real-Irish sentences and idioms from the stratosphere where they have gathered over the centuries, and beaming them into your own mind.

Well, maybe next month.

There is another way, though.

Much of the Irish published in the early 20^th century was written or translated by native speakers using their dialect.
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Sos beag anois.

Deirtear go mba choir do gach aon bhlog ais eigint a dheanamh dosna dhaoine a leigheann e, no feabhas beag a chur ar an saol acu. Seo chughat, ma ta....

Below, some useful words for when you're having second thoughts after eating ice cream while sitting on a rickety chair with untied shoelaces.

ATH-CHUINE (ie. Ath-Chuineamh)---Second thought

Example: Is minic gurb e an t-ath-chuine a mhillean an gno.  (It is often that it's the second thought that messes things up.) 'Millean' is ruin or destroy.

FUAIRTHNE (ie. FUAR-NIMH)---cold tingling pain

Example: Chuirfeadh ice cream fuairthne i mo fhiacla


CUIRICEACH---uneven, rickety

Example: Ta an bothar cuiriceach. Siuil cuiriceach (rickety unsteady walking). cathaoir chuiriceach (a chair with short leg or something like that.)


AR LIOBARNA---hanging down, ready to fall ('Ar' is the preposition 'on', etc.)

Example:  Ta do ialla ar liobarna leat. (Your shoelace is trailing.)

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And that brings us to.....Na Deisi.

The Decies (in English) is now generally identified with County Waterford, but that’s not really accurate. I’m using “Na Deisi” as shorthand for the Irish dialect that was spoken in County Waterford, south Tipperary, east Limerick, northeast County Cork, south Kilkenny (in many ways) and maybe even Clare, in some ways. 

If you look at a map, you’ll see that this is an arc of territory extending from the sea at County Waterford northwest to the sea in Clare—or to the Shannon Estuary, if we leave Clare out. South of it is the classic Munster dialect of Cork, Kerry and west Limerick. North were the poorly-known dialects of the Midlands (north Tipperary, north Kilkenny, Laois….). (Although a native speaker from near Kilkenny town was recorded in the mid-20th century.)

Unless we live in a place where we can interact with good Irish speakers in a variety of situations every day, it’s difficult to learn Irish well. It happens that, of all Irish dialects, Na Deisi is best and most widely represented in published material. 

Yes, there’s Mairtin O Cadhain for Cois Fhairrge, O Laoire and all the others for Muskerry in west Cork,  the O Grianna brothers for the Rosses in Donegal, and the 421 men and women from the Dingle peninsula who wrote books, but learning Irish from those books requires that we analyze the novels and stories, compile lists of usage, idioms and words—time-consuming work.

In Na Deisi, some people have done that work already.

There are published collections of words and idioms for some other dialects, but they focus only on unusual meanings of words; ones not found in the usual dictionaries.  Michael Sheehan in the early part of the 20th century set out, as part of the Revival, to record Deisi Irish in great detail in books of words and idioms. That means that we get everyday language with all its distinctions, levels of meaning and strangenesses, and not just the ‘different’ stuff. He worked mainly in An Rinn parish (Ringville) and Seana-Phobal (The Old Parish), places where Irish was still very strong at that point. (See Sean-Chaint na nDeise, Vol I and II, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The format of volume II is much clearer, I have to say.)

Piaras de Hindeberg continued the process in the mid-20th century, working particularly in the mountains by Mount Melleray. His collections from everyday conversations over many years with Maire Ni Chaoimh are particularly fascinating, and can be supplemented with her brothers’ published work. His stuff is published as part of Diolaim Dheiseach.

But today, since I am not Sheehan or O hAirt and don't have the right to reproduce their work, what I'm going to do here is to enter bits of prose from earlier books for your reading and linguistic pleasure, starting with Buaidh na Treise by Micheal O Griobhtha (O Griofa) from Lios O gCathasaigh/Lissycasey, southwest of Ennis in County Clare. It was published in 1928. 

Irish is a very rich language, but the supple eloquence of O Griofa's language is astonishing. It might have been because of that fact that O Griofa was selected to translate the Irish Constitution into Irish. This passage is not particular in any way; it's just the page I happened to open, rushing here before work.

(Clare is interesting in itself as an area of overlap of three major Irish dialects; the FitzGerald lordship lands of north Kerry (including Dingle) and Limerick (southwest Clare Irish (Kilbaha, Kilkee etc,) sounded  a lot like Dingle Irish to me); the Deisi dialect; and Galway (Galway most strongly in north Clare, logically enough). 

(By the way as well, I will start entering fadas as soon as I can. The language does look strange, to say the least, without them.... Anybody have any ideas on how to do it on Windows 10?)

In this bit, the landlord Arbha (Harvey) is visiting his tenants. He's basically a good guy, and is gradually learning that the poor Irish are not actually animals as he assumed. I have modernized the spelling here, though trying not to conceal dialectical features.

Thainig cuigear no seisear de leanaibh (dative plural) cosnochtaithe amach ag deanamh iongantas do sna marcacaibh (riders; dative plural). Thainig a mathair amach agus do sheasuigh ar an dtairsigh. Do chuimil si a lamh deas dá h-aprun agus do shin chum an tiarna i.

"Failte agus fiche romhat, a dhuine uasail," ar sise, ""agus go mairir do ghradam, a mhaistreas."

Do chuir an failtiu athas mor ar Sheon (an tiarna talun) Do phreab se de mhuin an chapaill agus do chroith lamh go beasach agus go lach leis an mbaintrai.

"Go mairir, a bhean choir," ar seisean. "Ta cuairt a thabhairt agam ar mo teanontaibh (dative plural), d'fheachaint ce an bhail ata ortha; agus is tusa an chead duine ar a dtugas cuairt, a bhean choir."

"Muise, feach ar sin anois," ar sise. "Dar go deimhin, a Mhaighistir, ach is mise ta momarach asam fein inniu. An chead chuairt ar Mhaire Nic Mhathuna; muise do bheatha, a Mhaighistir! Agus da olcas e an sean-chabalach ti ta againn, tar isteach; tar isteach, a dhuine uasail."

Do chuaidh an bheirt isteach agus thug si cathaoireacha sugain doibh le sui orthu. D'fheach an tiarna talun ina thimcheall agus do chrom ar nithe do thabhairt fe (faoi) ndeara. Bhi an chistin go leathan leacach; ach maidir le troscan, ni raibh cora cistineach dea-ordaithe ann. Bhi dha leabain san eadan thiar; an tinntean san eadan thoir; bord ar an slios theas; agus driosur agus cofra ar an slios thuaidh. Bhi corcain agus gaigini agus sciathoga agus giuirleidi eagsula caithe i n-an-ord ar fuaid an urlair. Bhi greideal fe chiste ar bhrannra ar leic na tine; agus d'fheach an Maistir go beacht mar ni fheaca se a leitheid sei de bhacaireacht riamh roimhe sin. Do sciob Maire an ciste de'n ghreideal agus do leag ar an mbord e.

"Ta se reidh, a dhuine uasail," ar sise. "Dar ndoigh, is maith is eol dam na fuil ocras ort; ach ba mhor an togaint chinn do'n mbaintrai an tiara talun do bhlaiseadh dá cuid bidh fe dhion ti aici,"

Do chuir feile na mna aiteas agus iongantas ar Arbha. Ni raibh duil aige i mbia da fheabhas an trath sin, gan tracht ar chiste te taosach a raghadh (rachadh) i gceangal 'n-a fhiaclaibh (dative plural); ach ni bhfaigheadh se ina chroi an bhean déiteach.

"Blaisfead (Blaisfidh me) agus failte, a bhean choir," ar seisean, "ma's ail leat."


Agus mar aduirt an te aduirt--(sean-fhocal, agus cad eile?)

Is fearr bo na ba;
Is fearr duine na daoine

Irish: the Inside or Perhaps Outside Story

Donal O Ceilleachair, Cuil Ao, Cork, storyteller.

To most Irish people today, the Irish language is absolutely irrelevant; an irritation in school; a ghost in the garret; an embarrassment. It is not really a language at all--not like French, say--but a sort of jargon made up of odd bits of phrases and words and road signs and indecipherable names of state and semi-state bodies, all thrown together in a bowl. Irish is "heritage", of course, which we used to think we should care about, but didn't really, and certainly don't now, because heritage is irrelevant and dead.

A hundred years ago, most people over the age of, say, forty or fifty, in most of the west and a large part of the south, had grown up speaking Irish. The idea that Irish would someday soon be gone from those places must have seemed very strange. 

Two hundred years ago, almost everyone outside Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow, south Meath, parts of Laois and Offaly, north Tipperary, and far south Wexford spoke Irish as their only language--not counting, of course,  the descendants of 17th century and later English and Scots settlers, and social climbers. The idea that Ireland would one day an English-speaking nation would have seemed absolutely bizarre.

Does it matter? Things change. A person can ask for a loaf a bread in English just as well as Irish, or tell someone that they are beautiful.

But Irish was different--a voice from ancient Europe, a voice from outside the empire and from beyond the town walls. There's a very specific sensibility that was associated with the language--clear-eyed, precise and realistic, but also desperately alive to and in love with this passing world and all its creatures and colours and textures. It is (was?) language as poetry. (And what is poetry but a means to keep waking us from everyday slumber to this splendid terrible world?)  Irish was a complex breathtaking music, voice of at least 2500 years of human experience in the island of Ireland (and in the Highlands of Scotland, because the Highlanders were really just Irish with boats?).  In it, the deer still bell, tree leaves stir in the wind, the river sings.  Irish literature is the oldest in Europe outside of Greek and Latin, and so vast that one could take a lifetime to come to know it.

So what happened?

What we consider Europe was created by the Roman Empire, and by the Roman Catholic church that succeeded it; by the holy Roman Empire, the Normans, and all the rest. Most of the villages of France grew out of Roman estates. None of the native languages of France, Spain, Italy and Belgium, etc. survived. Society was completely remade over the centuries of Empire. In the medieval period, official Latin culture dominated, and though most villagers did not share the official version, they also did not have opportunity to write down their own literature, and their social forms could only go so far before the Church or the authorities called them to heel.  Over the centuries, people's lives were molded more and more into one likeness.

(Samuel Palmer, the great English visionary artist)

Ireland was never conquered by the Romans. The Vikings made a mess later, but they were eventually contained within the Dublin area. The Normans and English blew through the place and almost burned the whole house down, but by the early 16th century, they too were contained within a few areas. If it hadn't been for the expansion of the extremely efficient, manic and violent Tudor state, Ireland would probably eventually have worked itself back toward balance again.

But too many Englishmen had their eyes on Heaven or on profit or on military glory, and the Irish were conveniently accessible. After the wars of conquest ended in 1607 with the final defeat of the Northern kings, Ireland was remade into a profitable rationally-planned economy and society run by crowds of very serious people from over the water wielding complete power. The grandchildren of the men who had fought with the English against the Northern kings etc., rose up in 1641, and the rest of the century was bloody havoc that ended with the English in even more complete charge.

Lord Burghley

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, many Irish communities underwent a complete break with what had gone before. The interests of the new generally, but not always, English landlords demanded that they rearrange their properties in certain ways in order to 'improve' them and to make them profitable. Yet these were not simply properties; they were age-old communities as well. 

When the landlord broke up the 'baile', the hamlet from which kin-groups cooperatively farmed the surrounding open fields; when he turned it into a few large farms rented to whoever could squeeze the largest profit from the land; when he left the rest of the people to make their way however they could, usually as half-starved agricultural labourers; when the landlord did these things, he cut the feet from under Eire. The refugees from these thousands of broken communities were forced to find places for themselves in the new English-speaking system and landscape based on the agricultural estates. The old disappeared from around them. They found themselves strangers in their own land.

Irish was now a language without a foundation, language of a culture that had lost its native ground; a broken culture. 

Change came first in the fertile densely-colonized lands generally in the east. Landlords and their tenants--the big farmers who were deeply integrated into the colonial economy, producing meat, milk and butter, and to some extent, linen, and who, in the interests of respectability and social mobility, were shifting to English--they needed few labourers. Everyone else had to immigrate, mostly to America. 

There was then a huge wave of immigration following the Famine, as more and more people could not get access to land and to food. The Famine itself killed mostly Irish-speaking people who were now also the poor who depended completely on the potato. It was a devastating traumatic five-year-long hell that beside killing a lot of people, apparently destroyed many Irish communities' belief in the old way. The only answer that many of them saw was to leap onto the back of the colonial economy cart and fight like hell to make a place for themselves there. The alternative was terrible poverty, immigration or death. 

So the social structure that resulted in many areas was an unbalanced neurotic one; communities of people utterly focused on getting ahead and on respectability within the English colonial world; communities of survivors and of people who had watched their neighbors go under. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Irish was still the first language of most people over, say, forty, in the west and much of the south. The 1880s seem to have marked the turning point, as agricultural downturns sent a first wave of emigrants from poorer Irish-speaking places in the west to America. The growing confidence and local power of the 'big farmer' group almost everywhere in Ireland meant that their ways dominated, and their concern with respectability and profit left no room for old-fashioned things like Irish. The Church wanted as little to do with this language of the backward and the poor as it could. Children were required to go to school where English was the only language allowed and where they'd be beaten for speaking Irish. Newspapers were in English. Politics was in English. To survive, a person needed English.

The impetus for the counter-cultural movement of cultural renewal beginning in, say, the late 1890s came from Douglas Hyde and others who saw the language and its culture as the voice of humanity in Ireland, and as an antidote to the repressed, drab, empty life of modern Irish communities. Whether this vision might have changed Ireland for the better will never be known. It's easier to learn to shoot a gun and to shout slogans than it is to learn a culture, and physical force men soon gained the ascendancy. Though the state they created gave lip-service to Irish, very little changed. It was the big farmers and shopkeepers and priests and civil servants who ran things, and they still saw no use at all for this patois of the poor and remote.   

Actually, things did change in a few places, mostly in the far west of the Dingle peninsula, in Gweedore/Gorthahork and in parts of Conamara where there were large populations who didn't know much English. There, the provision of some official services in Irish and the limited economic benefits that followed being an Irish-speaking community, stabilized the linguistic situation.

Stiofain O hEalaoire, west Clare (Doolin) storyteller


In other places--west Cork, Rosses (Donegal), etc., etc., the processes of language shift to English that had already begun, continued. Old people spoke Irish to each other, and there were Irish road signs about the place, but within the houses and at meetings and so on, the language of commerce dominated. When the old people died, so did Irish. 

Today only a few very small communities still use Irish as their normal unmarked language; Tory Island and Magherroarty/Meenaclady/maybe Bealtaine and odd other bits of Gortahork and Gweedore in northwest Donegal; Inisheer Island and Screeb, Rosaveal, maybe Carraroe, in Conamara; plus the westernmost few houses in Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle Peninsula). (As regards Arainn: Inis Meain is apparently losing population quickly and brings in young mostly non-Irish-speaking families. Parts of "rural" Inis Mor may still be Irish-speaking.)

There are other areas where there are networks of families who speak Irish in the house and to each other: An Rinn (Waterford); Cuil Ao (West Cork), and in parts of the Conamara and northwest Donegal (maybe Teelin in the southwest?) and west Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltachts.

On the other hand, there may be almost no native speakers left in the Ivreagh (Kerry) peninsula: Ballingeary, Ballyvourney, Clondrohid, Killnamartra (west Cork); Cape Clear (Cork); Seana-Phobal (Waterford); East Galway; most of north Conamara;  the contiguous Corr na Mona and Tourmakeady area; southwest Donegal; Fanad and Rosguil, (north Donegal.) In fact, there is hardly anyone who can speak Irish left anywhere in Mayo except the Kilgalligan peninsula and the bottom of the Mullet peninsula, but they usually do not speak it. Central Donegal is going fast.

There are some Irish speakers in the North, most of whose parents learned it, if they did not learn it themselves. There are Irish-speaking networks in Belfast and Derry city. There are two or three rural areas that are making a strong effort to re-establish Irish as an ordinary spoken language: Creggan etc. in far south Armagh; Carntogher, a small area in mid county Derry; part of Tyrone south of the Sperrins. (These are all areas in which Irish was still spoken as a native language by some old people in the first half of the 20th century.)

Gweedore, 19th century

The official Gaeltacht (map above) is much bigger than the actual area where Irish is a normal language, of course, and until the 1970s, northwest and also central Donegal (Fintown, at any rate and na Cruacha); 6 parishes in the west of the Dingle peninsula; Conamara west of Spiddle to Carna; Arainn; and the Kilgalligan peninsula (Mayo) were solidly Irish-speaking in reality. But another linguistic shift happened in the 1970s, particularly in Conamara, Dingle and Gweedore etc., when government-subsidized foreign factories were established in order to stop the flow of emigration that was draining the poor Gaeltacht regions. Factory management was English-speaking, and the whole factory environment was. This new life was an English-speaking one, and encouraged a shift to English that television and closer integration into national life were already causing.

Momentary prosperity did, thus, keep Gaeltacht people at home, but it also very often taught them that they could finally stop being second-class citizens, if they started speaking English. Or if they were cursed until death with Irish, then their children might escape the curse, if they were raised in English instead of in Irish. 

Free secondary education and growing sophistication provided the basis for another development--the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, which galvanized young Irish speakers in Conamara and the west of the Dingle peninsula to demand that the government stop treating them as zoo exhibits for tourists, and give them some measure of local government. Radio na Gaeltachta began as a pirate radio station. 

These actions turned out to be a last gasp of the Irish-communities. The government reacted to their demands in a characteristic way,  accepting the demands in principle, and then, after years of study and committees, only offering a few small crumbs. Almost nothing changed as a result, except that more and more parents had begun speaking English to their children in the meantime. 

(Irish governments have all along been very good at producing great insightful detailed plans every fifteen years or so of how to support current Irish-speaking communities. Then the plans are forgotten and never implemented. When there are only two native Irish-speakers left in Ireland, there will doubtless be another detailed weighty government plan on how to save the language.)

Other things have happened. Increasing prosperity in the 1990s and first years of the new century were the foundation for a renewal of interest in the language; a renewal that built on the activities of a very creative small group of slightly earlier poets, musicians and writers in Irish whose work expressed a vital exhilarating "Irishness" that had nothing to do with the official repressed version. 

As a result, more parents demanded an opportunity for their children to learn and use the language in primary schools whose working language was Irish. (Private primary schools are rare in Ireland, so the demand involved pressuring the unwilling government.) These Gaelscoileanna are now common, and though a percent of the parents are mainly interested in the good student/teacher ratios in Gaelscoileanna, in the individual attention their children receive there and in the general advantages of early bilingualism, some do want their children to learn and use Irish.

TG4, the Irish language television, does broadcast many programs in Irish and often plays a very creative role in the media. Radio na Gaeltachta continues. Irish is visible and audible in some parts of the country in ways that it was not twenty years ago--remarkably so. Yet though the revival is broad, it is not very deep. There are probably not that many people who have learned Irish well and actually use it in the home or as their main language. 

A hundred years ago, over 50% of the people in many parts of the west and south spoke Irish. Today 2% of the population using Irish daily in a place is a triumph. (See Small Area figures for recent censuses.) And as experiences in Wales and Brittany show, children can use a language all day long in school, yet never learn it effectively or integrate it into themselves. Too often, Irish is still a bit of a thing used so that other people won't understand, or for unimportant things. It is an addendum on Anglo life.

So is there hope?

It's difficult to imagine Irish language continuing when there are no communities that use it, and when the people who know it speak English in most of the domains of their life; when it does not express values or meanings other than those that mainstream Anglo life already enunciates more fully and attractively--when there is no need for it. 

After all, a language is part of a culture and expresses that culture. If the culture disappears, the language survives only on life support, at the mercy of fashion and of this year's budget.

And yet, and yet....

Elena, a Rion,                                                           Elena, Queen,

tabhair duinn do laimhin tais                                    give us your soft hand,

abair nach lomchaite leat                                          tell us our frenetic poems   

ar vearsai fraoch.                                                      aren't worm or moth-eaten.

Abair nach ideal aoldaite                                          Say it's not some clapped-out ideal                                     

do bheal a phogadh,                                                  For us to want to kiss your mouth,   

lui led thaobh.                                                           lie down beside you.

   poem by Michael Davitt, translation by Paul Muldoon.

An old song

Sliabh na mBan is a mountain in south Tipperary. It is also a well-known song about the United Irishman rising in 1798.

Some say that the Cork poet and scholar Peadar o Longain composed the song, but there's no certainty to the story. There's no doubt, however, that the song has almost no connection to the nineteenth century patriotic song, Slievenamon, made by Kickham and still sung at Tipperary sporting events. The difference between the two songs is striking. The earlier--as I hope to show here--is sharply and effectively imagistic, concise, and the product of a rigorous intellect. Kickham's song is sentimental, mushy, imprecise and diffuse.

To understand the older song, one needs to remember that the native Irish ("Gaels") in this period were in a situation similar to that of, say, the black South Africans thirty years ago. Yes, Corkery's Hidden Ireland was actually a lot more complicated in terms of social structure than he thought, and a hidden Catholic gentry did indeed exist in the form of middlemen renting estates from the mostly English landlords. Yet by this period, many of these middlemen had been absorbed into the colonial culture and were not only discarding "Gaelic" culture, but doing everything they could to differentiate themselves from the mass of peasants who were competing desperately with one another for access to rented land; those, that is,who had not already sunk into into big rural slums by the roadsides or on bogs.

As De Tocqueville, the French traveler,  noted, there was not a command a landlord could come up with that the Irish would not obey. They did not obey out of love for their landlord, but because he was part of a system that had power of life and death over them. If a tenant displeased a landlord, the tenant would be evicted and likely be forced to join the mass of other evicted former farmers competing for the few available jobs as farm laborers. Or the landlord, as likely local justice of the peace, could charge the tenant with a crime and then condemn him at the next sitting of court.

Yet there was another Hidden Ireland, one invisible to the landlords and to official society and to Corkery and Kickham. A lot had already doubtless been forgotten by 1798, but in the many areas where Irish was still spoken, people still kept a knowledge of what had been before 1601 and the wars of the 17th century. They knew who were the current representatives of the old royal and noble families, and who had lived where. They knew their local history; the name of every rock and hill told of the ancestors and things they had done. They knew the supernatural realities of their place--the fairy queens and so forth. They knew the traditional history of Ireland. Poets and scholars kept a national or at least regional consciousness alive.

So the gentle cone-shaped mountain of Sliabh na mBan that stands like a throne over the southeast Tipperary plain had its ancient traditions and symbolic importance. It is, after all, Sliabh na mBan Bhfionn: Mountain of the Fairhaired Women, most likely otherworld women, (and not the Mountain of Fionn's Women, though there is a story about him and them.)  The otherworld dwelling of Sid ar Femen is here. (Femen is the old name of the plain.) Fionn Mac Cumhaill obtains magical insight when his thumb is caught in the door of the otherworld dwelling, as he protects the human world from theft of the land's fertility. The otherworld lord Bodhbh Dearg dwells there, and he is the father of Sadhbh, mother of Fionn's son Oisin (Little Deer) who embodies a union of wild and human.

The mountain thus enters this song here not as an agglomeration of rock and dirt, but as a well-known element in local history and traditional consciousness; a witness of what had been and what still should have been, in the view of the Irish, once the evil times were over and the world had righted itself.

Mossy Scanlan, a singer from near Feothanach in the west of the Dingle peninsula, sings the song.

The Verses.

The song focuses on the image of the mountain and always returns to it for a stanza's final image and line, but the events dealt with are those of the Rising as a whole. The skirmish on the mountain was actually a very minor unimportant one.

The song begins with a common motif used to express the fact that the world has been shoved out of harmony by a tragic event. The blackbird's beautiful song, common backdrop to Irish country life, is silent, and the fertility of the land has ended. The otherworld woman laments, as for a death, stating that usual life has ended, that there is no rest. A group of enemies has come together and controls the land, and we will be battered to pieces by them here on the slopes of the mountain.

In the second verse, a defeat is mentioned, and the enemies with their power of horses and swords and muskets jeer at country weapons like pikes (the common military weapon of the late 16th century) and farm implements. The Irish have not come together; they moved here and then there on the mountain, uncertain like a herd of cows with no direction.

The Irish acted without forethought, and were defeated because they did so. If they had only waited until others had joined them, and had God's help, they would have been victorious on the slopes of the mountain.

Then we see the "Gaels" smashed to pieces by English cannon at the battle of New Ross, hiding behind any shelter they can find. The power of the conqueror and of his technology overwhelms the people of the place, and by implication, the mountain, the Otherworld; Eire. But we will pick up our country weapons again, and some day, we will make them shake in their boots on the slopes of the mountain.

But this is only the beginning. Out on the sea, French fleets are gathering and help is coming. We will not go along with the oppressive machinery of the colonial economy, and there will be light and joy on the mountain--the world will return to its own natural way.

The French are ready to act; the masts of their ships pierce the sky, and they are coming here to place those who have suffered back in their own places again, to reestablish the way of things. If I was sure of it, I would be merry as the blackbird in the tree. One day soon, horns will sound celebration on the sunny mountain.

(A lot about Ireland is explained by the fact that, as we know, help never did come, and life continued to drain out of traditional Ireland until today it is barely alive, even in memory.)

Well, you know what? Set out like that, the song sounds feeble and stereotyped--just another patriotic come-all-ye. That it is not, is due to the succession of images as performed, and music of the words. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The Song

It's amhran, so watch out for the pattern of vowels in the accented syllables.

Here's what I get for the first verse:
i  a   e   o   ea
i   a   e   o  ea
i   i   e   o   e
i   e   i   ae  a

(Most every i, e and o are long, but his keyboard won't allow me to add a fada.)

Second verse:
a   ao   a   e
ao   i   e   u   e
u   w   i   a   e
u   ao   i   ia   a

The pattern is roughly the same all through, though no verse is exactly the same as another. Some of the lack of continuity in vowels is more apparent than real, given Deisi and general Munster pronunciation. The translation is very quick and makes absolutely no pretension to quality.

I'm using Nioclas Toibin's text (died 1966; not the well-known singer) from Duanaire Deiseach, Sairseal agus Dill, 1978. He learned the song at the beginning of the 20th century from Padraig O Faolain from Cill na bhFraochan near Dungarvan.

I omit one verse--what would have been the second-to-last, concerning prisoners freed--by accident.

Sorry too about the lack of fadas. Yes, it is a travesty of the Irish, but I still cannot get the program to permit them.

Ni airim vearsa o lon no o cheirseach
a's ni fhasann fear insna coilltibh ceart;
Nil suim ag an speirbhean i sport no i bleisiur,
ach i ag gol a's ag beicigh a's ag reababh bas,
a ra gan faothaomh, ni bhfhaigheadh na seimh-fhear
aon oiche in Eirinn na uain chun reast
ag an trup so meirligh a's iad ag teacht le cheile,
a's go mbuailfear caoch sinn ar Shliabh na mBan

I hear no music from the blackbird or his mate,
and the grass grows no longer under forest trees;
the sky woman finds no joy or pleasure,
she weeps, screeching and striking palms together;
saying again and again that the strong men cannot find
even one place to lay their heads or to sleep the night,
on the run from these bastards who've gathered together,
and that we'll be beaten blind on the slopes of Sliabh na mBan.


A's is oth lion feining bualadh an lae ud
do dhul ar Ghaeil bhocht a's na ceadta a slad,
mar ta na meirligh ag deanamh geim dinn
a's ag ra nach aoinne leo pice no slea.
Nior thainig ar Major i ndtus an lae chuinn
a's ni rabhamar feinig i gcoir na i gceart,
ach mar a sheolfai treada de bha gan aire
ar thaobh na greine de Shliabh na mBan.

It is my sorrow and regret, the beating that day
inflicted on the Gaels, and hundreds wounded or hurt;
the bastards are jeering, laughing at us poor fools
saying they're not afraid of things like pitchforks and shovels.
Our commander never came to us as day began
and we ourselves were only confused  and without order
like a herd of cows wandering with no herdsman
on the slopes where the sun rises on Sliabh na mBan.

Mo lean leir ar an dream gan eifeacht,
nar fhan le eirim istoiche no stad
go mbeadh duiche Deiseach a's an tir ar fad
ag teacht lena cheile o'n tir aneas;
bheadh cunamh De linn a's an tir ar fad,
a's ni dhiolfadh meirleach darbh ainm Neil sinn,
a's bhuafai an reim linn ar Shliabh na mBan.

Sorrowful fools, you are a crowd without sense or strength
who did not wait until night to rise up, or wait
until the Deisi country and whole land together
had gathered united here from lands to the south:
until our camps were laid out, with strong forces:
We'd have had God's help, and from all the land,
and no bastard named Neill could betray us for pay:
the field would have been ours where the sun rises on Sliabh na mBan.

Is e Ros do bhreoigh a's do chloigh ge deo sinn,
mar ar fagadh morchuid dinn sinte lag,
leanai oga ina smaola doite
a's an meid a fhan beo dhiobh cois clai no scairt;
ach geallaim fein dhaoibh, an te a dhein an foghla,
go mbeamna i gcoir do le pic a's le slea,
a's go gcuirfeam Yeoman ar crith ina mbroga,
ag diol a gcomhair leo ar Shliabh na mBan.



It is in New Ross that we were battered and thrown down,
there where so many were stretched out, wounded or dead;
young children made into burnt black meat,
and any still alive sheltering behind walls and bushes.
But I promise you, you ones who did that slaughter,
that we'll be ready for you with pitchforks and shovels,
We'll make the militias shake in their boots,
paying them back for what's owed them on Sliabh na mBan.

Ta na cobhlaigh mhora ag iarraidh eolais,
ta'n aimsir og a's an chabhair ag teacht.
An Te a mhill na gnotha, is e a leigheasfadh fos iad,
a's ni dhiolfam feoirling leo, cios no slea;
piosa coroineach an chuid ba mho dhe,
luach eiric bo no teaghlach deas.
Beidh rinnce ar bhoithre a's soillse a ndo againn,
beidh meidhir a's mortas ar Shliabh na mBan.

Big fleets of warships are seeking passage and way,
the day is still young and help will come to us soon.
God who set our plans all awry, he will put them right again.
We won't pay them anything in rents or for ?? (seems like a mistake in the Irish. "slea'" is to cut turf.)
to redeem cattle they confiscated from us or for fine houses;
A bit of a crown piece at the very most, we'll pay.
There will be dances on the roads; we'll light torches and bonfires;
joy and delight together will be on Sliabh na mBan.

A's ta an Francach faobhrach a's a loingeas gleasta,
le ranna geara acu ar muir le seal;
'S e an sior-sgeal go bhfuil a dtriall ar Eirinn,
a's go gcuirfid Gaeil bhocht aris ina gceart;
Da mba doigh liom feining go mb'fhior an sgeal,
bheadh mo chroi chomh eadtrom le lon ar sceach;
go mbeidh lot ar mheirligh a's an adharc a seideadh
ar thaobh na greine de Shliabh na mBan.

The French tremble with eagerness and their ships are ready.
The ship masts are sharp and strong there on the sea waiting;
Everyone is saying that Ireland is their goal now;
that they'll place those who've suffered in their right place again.
If I myself knew that that news was true news,
my heart would be merry as the blackbird in the thorn tree;
that the bastards would be beaten, and cow-horns sounding,
on the slope where the sun rises on Sliabh na mBan.

 Slievenamon by Kickham (1828-1882)

Kickham was son of a prosperous household north of Sliabh na mBan, in a prosperous fertile part of Tipperary in which his own generation was probably the first to be ignorant of Irish. He later became a prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, but his "nationalism", like theirs, was an abstract thing based on allegiance to a generalized Irish nation. It was often utterly ignorant of the reality of people, place and tradition, its own Irishness merely the mirror-image of the English view of the Irish.

This song is rooted in popular sentimental English Victorian poetry, by way of one of the main strands of Anglo-Irish poetry and song; "The Emigrant Regrets."

Yes, there are a few images to begin, but then we are lost in a vapid mist of sentiment that is as foreign to original Irish (Gaelic) tradition, as it is to emotion and clarity.

Alone all alone by the wave-washed strand
And alone in a crowded hall
The hall it is gay and the waves they are grand
But but my heart is not here at all
It lies far away by night and by day
To the times and the joys that are gone
But I never will forget the sweet maiden I met
In the valley near Slievenamon

Oh it was not the grace of her queenly air
Nor her cheeks of roses glow
Nor her soft black eyes nor her flowing hair
Nor was it her lily white brow
'Twas the soul of truth and of melting ruth
And the smile like a summer's dawn
that stole my heart away one soft summer's day
In the valley near Slievenamon.

In the festive hall by the star watched shore
Oh ever my restless spirit cries
My love oh my love will 1 ne'er see you more
And my land will you never up-rise
By night and by day I ever ever pray
While lonely my life flows on
To see our flag unrolled
And my true love to enfold
In the valley near Slievenamon.

So much lost, along with the Irish language....

(I reserve all rights to this essay, and to the translations) ©Jay Callahan 2021

(And by the way, has some other site recommended this post in particular? There are crowds of people each week trampling in. Let me know, if you would. Thanks!)

Breton: the Inside Story

Breton

   A dance; pachpi (passpied in the French original), a minor dance of mostly eastern central Breton-speaking Brittany, and neighboring French-speaking eastern Brittany.

Breton is the language of western Brittany in France--the enormous peninsula that sticks out under (more or less) southwestern England. Despite some earlier argument that one Breton dialect (Gwened/Vannes) contains a substantial Gaulish element, it's accepted today that Breton was brought from southwestern England in the ?? century as Celtic-speaking Britons fled Anglo-Saxon and Irish invasions. It may be that the incoming Britons possessed a social organization better equipped to the situation there than did the partly-Romanized Gaulish society already in Armorica (Brittany). Whatever the reason, the descendents of the leaders of the immigrants became the kings of a new nation that arose from the wreckage of the Roman Empire, and it spoke the language brought from England.

Brittany was often attacked by the French state in its various forms, but remained independent until the 15th century. At the same time, its capital, Rennes, was in eastern Brittany, an area that was never Breton-speaking, only conquered from the French. The Breton aristocracy was gradually drawn into the prestigious French-speaking world, so that by the time Breton independence was lost, many were French in culture. This meant that--unlike in Ireland and Wales--there was no longer any structural support for secular Breton literature and learning. Breton monasteries were assimilated into the French monastic world, and also ceased to support Breton learning. The upper hierarchies of the Church became French. So almost no older Breton literature survives in Breton; only a handful of short medieval poems. The lais (poem stories) of Marie De France that were so influential in the early Middle Ages derive from Breton stories (many of the proper names are Breton), but they're in French. Some French authors of Arthurian literature also claim that they translate from Breton too, but this is uncertain.

 Quere/Le Menn: a kan ha diskan song for dancing. (That's why people are yelling in the background.)

That left everybody who wasn't a noble or well-off townsman talking away in Breton, singing and telling stories. They kept doing that until probably the 1920s/1930s, when the structures of French society increased their grip on Breton communities. The French have only astonished contempt for any language that isn't standard French, and never tired of telling Bretons and other savages that they were poor, dirty, pathetic cretins because they spoke Breton, Occitan, Alsatian or whatever. Breton children were very regularly punished for speaking Breton in school. (As were the Irish for speaking Irish, the Welsh Welsh, etc.) Though an interesting non-religious Breton literature grew up in the early part of the 20th century, most people only encountered written language through the medium of French.

Then came World War II and the conflagration of French patriotism that was a reaction to the German occupation. Also, in the 1950s, the peasant agriculture of Brittany was disintegrated by the new capital-intensive mechanized fertilizer-intensive agriculture. As a result, the structure of rural communities gradually also disintegrated, as fewer and fewer people could make a living there. Many emigrated to Paris to take menial jobs. French society was already very centralized in Paris, but now, with television, pop music and movies, its culture became inescapable in every community in rural France. More and more daily social interactions occurred in new contexts that were perceived as intrinsically 'modern', and therefore French. The new world spoke French, and anyone not completely at ease in the language was doomed to be a poor, dirty, pathetic cretin forever. The Breton intelligentsia was very weak. The peasant culture was demoralized. The Church turned to French. There was no center of resistance to what was happening.

Parents stopped speaking Breton to their children, in order to equip them to live in the new world, or because they didn't want them to be cretins, or because they wanted to be French or modern. The change happened at different times in different parts of Brittany. In most of Gwened province, it happened in the 1940s. In the areas of Kernow/Cornaouilles  near the sea, and in many parts of Leon province, it occurred in the mid-1950s (or earlier in parts of the southern coast). In the more remote center of Brittany, it happened in about the mid-1960s. In inland Treger province and in nearby parts of Kernow, it happened in the mid 1980s.

There was a cultural revival in the early 1970s as part of the general Western European ethnic and countercultural movement. Breton language, music and became fashionable among some young people. Some of them even learned the language. The Diwan Breton-immersion private schools were founded, mostly in cities and towns. The divide between the new Breton enthusiasts in the cities and the peasants in the countryside, however, was rarely bridged. Many rural communities were still intensely Breton-speaking, but they became less so by the day, as older people who never got used to the idea of speaking French (or who couldn't) died, and younger people who were turning to French, and also their children, raised in French, became a more influential portion of the community.

A reaction occurred, beginning maybe in the 1990s. Parents in some areas demanded that the government permit the formation of elementary school classes taught mostly in Breton, so that children raised in French would learn the and use the language. These classes are very common today. Some communes (parishes/villages) use Breton in signage and on official forms. Thousands of children have passed through the Diwan private school system (all-Breton). There are a fair number of books published in Breton. There's a thriving Breton music scene, and local radio that broadcasts partly in Breton. (There's really no Breton permitted on television, though.) It would be possible to think that Breton is coming back from the brink.

Yet beneath the cultural ferment, older people who were raised in Breton continue to die (logically enough), and communities become more and more solidly French. Brittany is very very firmly integrated into French society and culture. Thirty years ago, Breton was an inescapable fact almost everywhere in Brittany; always there in overheard conversations on the street; in people's faces, in their voices. Now.....

The other problem is that schooling is only the first step in language acquisition and in language revitalization. The experience in Ireland and Wales shows that children can do their education in the minority language, but still never take the language outside of the schoolroom. Many children who learn Breton in school never become effective Breton speakers. Even the Diwan children probably more often speak French--actual French, or Breton so molded by French phonology and syntax that it's almost incomprehensible without a knowledge of French. A recent study shows that almost all of them end up living in other parts of France, or in the two big cities of Brest and Rennes, where Breton-speakers are a tiny tiny minority.

(In the video below, the first girl speaks beautiful Breton of the Gwened dialect--very very unusual for someone so young today. The phonology of the dialect is more close to western peasant French than are the other Breton dialects further west, but I love Gwened, so who cares! On the other hand, the girls in blue speak a 'French' Breton that, to me, is painful to listen to.)

There are areas where there's still a chance.

Mostly that's central Treger province--roughly within a circle going through Lannion east to Treger town, south to Guingamp, then west to Guerlesquin and north to Plistin say, and back to Lannion. The area is strongly Breton, and many people there want to keep Breton going. The areas just south (Calanhel, Bourbriac, Logivy-Plougras, etc, etc. are similar. 

In the whole area centered around Carhaix, Breton is somewhat less strong, but still alive among older generations. Breton may survive in parts of the Bigouden area (the parishes west and northwest of Pont L'Abbe town to the sea, in far southwestern Brittany.) There is the island of Sein. There are some villages between Quimperle and Gourin (Querrien, Lanvenangen, Langonnet).

There are a few small areas in Leon province in the northwest, perhaps; Sizun; farming villages south of St Pol; Plouvien, etc, and maybe Guisseny/Kerlouan in the Pagan area. 

 In Gwened province, there's really only Sant Yann Bubry, Melrand, Quistinid and Languidic, plus some parishes between Languidic and Auray town (Lokoal, Brec'h, etc.)

Here's hoping....

In the meantime, here's what Breton sounds like:

Maurice Prigant is from Plounevez-Moedec west of Gwengamp. He tells a story about a friend of his who was so thin he was nicknamed 'The Sausage'. When he dies of a heart attack, his friends put a sausage in his coffin. St. Peter and a succession of others in Heaven are mystified until they consult with an old nun there. You don't need to know more.

Remi Ar Gallou is from just slightly further north, telling a story about Easter Confession.

A woman from the Kastell-Nevez-ar-Faou (Chateauneuf) area east of  Pleyben in the center of Brittany talks about being in the U.S. during Prohibition. The accent has always sounded American Appalachian to me, somehow.

Below Goulc'han Kervella, founder and director of Strollad ar Vro Pagan (a popular theater group), answers questions about the history of theatre in Breton. He's from Plougerneau on the north coast of the province of Leon, and after about three minutes, once he gets going, you can hear the lilting cadence of that dialect. Below him, a guy from east Leon, the general St Pol de Leon area. You don't have to wait three minutes in this one.

Below, two men from the Bigouden area look at and discuss a low-lying natural area between beach dunes, and farmed land.

If you want to hear more, the Brezhoneg Digor site has lots of tapes of speakers from Central Brittany. Put "Remi ar Gallou" in YouTube and you'll get lots of videos of storytellers from Treger near the Central Brittany "border."

Coming soon: Irish.